A little word that means so much!”Sorry” was said in a very special place in Australia today …….

Sorry is a word not often heard in Parliament. Nevertheless, today Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized on behalf the present Government to the Indigenous people of Australia.

Many people believe the apology is long overdue, but are glad that it finally came.

Ramiz & Timothy

The “Stolen Generation” were remembered today by all of Australia.

Natalie & Lilly

The Government (in the 1900’s) had done the wrong thing to Indigenous people. They took the children away from their parents just because they didn’t have full Aboriginal background, never to see their parents again! That’s why they are called the “Stolen Generation”.

Momtahina & Nadine

The Government at the time thought they were doing the right thing ….. but Australia wants to say sorry……

Sharon & Kesaia

Today, on the 13th February, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said “Sorry” to the Stolen Generations. We thought it was fair, kind and brilliant; as well as this it was a relief to Indigenous Australians.

Justin & Winson

Reconciliation: a long word as its a long story ….. A long time ago , from the 1930’s the Government took the aboriginal children because they thought that it was the right thing to do. But nowdays we think that in most ways it was bad. Because of this our new Prime Minister said “Sorry”.

Dushan & Marshall

Today we have been investigating dragons – it seems that many places and people right around the world share stories, myths and legends about dragons.

Do you know any stories about dragons? What are dragons like in the stories that you know?

Do you believe that they are/were real?

Do you think that dragons are related to these two “real” Australian dragons -

Lake Eyre Dragon

Sea Dragon

Please join our conversation about dragons

As part of our “History Never Repeats?” question we have been reading some of Shakespeare’s plays, because Shakespeare was an important part of history as well as writing a number of historical plays.  

We have chosen to perform “Macbeth” for our class item in Assembly this week. After being inspired by Kindergarten’s performance of the story “A Dark, Dark Tale” we decided to re-write Macbeth in the same way.

To help us sort out the parts of the story we would perform, we all used Mind Maps to organise and identify the important parts of the story. You can see a composite of what we came up with on this Bubbleshare presentation ……..

[bubbleshare 232192.d42832b4179]

We had to add the “Dark, dark” tale bits to join the story together.

Now we have to work out who will be each character and practise on the stage.

We hope to video our performance and put it, and some still photos, on our blog after Friday, so stay tuned ……

What do you think Shakespeare would say about us changing his play?  

We have been  using a game making program called MissionMaker to make learning about history fun and interesting. We have been researching a person, place or civilization from either of these periods: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern  as part of our “History Never Repeats?” Project. 

We have to apply the information that we gathered from our “History Never Repeats?” Project and apply it to our MissionMaker game. We are nearly ready to make our own MissionMaker game.  

So far each person in the class has created a Mind Map and created a game story related to their game.We are going to use the game story and Mind Map as the base for our game.  

 We have been trying to transfer our game ideas, characters and worlds to the ones available in MissionMaker. This has not always been easy because of the limited worlds, characters and props in the game.

  By Martin, Matthew, Momtahina & Dushan     :cool:   

The AllStars have been studying history this year and are pondering the saying

“History never repeats”

Read this article about Stonehenge and then leave a comment about what you think!

What were you thinking about as you read this article?

What surprised you about this article? Why were you surprised?

What sorts of images or feelings did the article stimulate?

Why do you think scientists are so interested in finding out how people lived in times past?

Does the information that the scientists gather have any impact on our lives today? 

Do you think that a shared knowledge & understanding of times past can / does help us understand problems and issues of today?